


Heinz==>Remember

by TheSpiderWriter



Series: Wanting To Remember (Unable To Forget) [1]
Category: Phineas and Ferb
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Doof as Phineas's bio dad, F/M, Family, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Mindfuck?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 06:03:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17380988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpiderWriter/pseuds/TheSpiderWriter
Summary: He dreams sometimes, about a woman, and a girl, and a small boy. In the dream they’re all happy, and he feels… warm. Full. But when he wakes up, all the details disappear, up in smoke, leaving just the vague understanding of abstractions. He figures the woman is Charlene (though he sometimes wonders if it’s that popstar he had a terrible first date with, and dismisses it out of hand) and Vanessa is the girl, but, as for the boy… He can’t find an explanation.





	Heinz==>Remember

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Better for All the World](https://archiveofourown.org/works/274852) by [Wikitiki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wikitiki/pseuds/Wikitiki). 



> Wow, my first fanfiction in like six years and it's for Phineas and Ferb. Did not see that coming.  
> F/M is for Heinz/Linda and Heinz/Charlene, but I didn't tag those since they're both exes. If you think I should, let me know and I'll change that. M/M and "Ambiguous relationships" refers to Perry/Heinz--it can be shippy or not depending on your interpretation. Can be read as human Perry or platypus Perry, depending on your desires.  
> Enjoy!

There’s something missing in his life. Heinz can feel it, like a gaping wound in his chest, an aching hole where there used to be _substance._

He misses them--people he’s never known. It’s absurd, he knows it, probably a byproduct of the depression that’s found its home wound around his neck. A scarf of loneliness and dejection.

He dreams sometimes, about a woman, and a girl, and a small boy. In the dream they’re all happy, and he feels… warm. Full. But when he wakes up, all the details disappear, up in smoke, leaving just the vague understanding of abstractions. He figures the woman is Charlene (though he sometimes wonders if it’s that popstar he had a terrible first date with, and dismisses it out of hand) and Vanessa is the girl, but, as for the boy… He can’t find an explanation.

Eventually he decides it’s a projection of his younger self. The little baby Heinz, before the joy was beaten out of him, back when he could still find warmth in things like Balloony and Mama Ocelot. Because he has the distinct impression that this boy doesn’t know anything about misery.

It’s ridiculous, how he wakes up with pains in his chest, his heart palpitating. When he’s awake, he doesn’t even _miss_ Charlene, not really. He misses the role she was meant to fill, sure--someone to love, to hold onto, someone to prop him up in his moments of weakness. Someone he could do the same for.

But Charlene didn’t need any propping, and she didn’t know how to prop up something as delicate as Heinz Doofenschmirtz without breaking it in eleven different ways.

He does miss Vanessa, when she’s with her mother. And having her with him always brings him such joy. He’s not good at expressing it, he always messes up, but he keeps trying, because she is _everything_ to him.

Except… even when she’s there, he still feels those missing people. Feels the _absence_ gnawing at him, as if not only he, but also Vanessa, have been deprived of the presence of someone desperately important.

They can’t possibly be real, because there aren’t any faces to conjure, no personalities, just void. Just random moments, here and there--when he sees a young girl having a panic attack, a triangle in just the right configuration, when he hears strains of children’s laughter floating up, at just the right age and note… It’s like his whole world pitches sideways, part of him reaching out to grab at the escaping shapes, another part of him fighting it down, struggling to _leave it alone._

It gives him headaches. Sometimes it even makes him nauseas.

Sometimes he cries.

Perry shows up in the body of a teenage girl one day, and it’s funny--when Perry’s gone he can’t remember a single detail of how he looked. Just… a girl. A girl who, when he tries to concentrate on where he might have seen her before, dissolves into dizziness, and lands him on the floor.

One of the owners of Chez Platypus has that same quality, where the moment Heinz looks away he can’t remember what he looked like. This time he does his best just _not to look,_ he’s here on a date anyway, why should a little face-blindness get in the way?

There are mornings where he can see them, briefly, in the moments between waking and sleeping. Where they’re still clear in his mind, and he feels compelled to scribble it down, to draw them--except when that happens it’s like he’s stuck in sleep paralysis, his body demanding that he stay exactly where he is. Then they disappear, and it’s too late.

Their names linger on his lips at times. _So close,_ but not close enough.

Though… there is one night, one night where he wakes in a cold sweat, crying and screaming their names, eyes wild, hands clutching at his hair and his chest. _“CANDACE! PHINEAS! My daughter, my son, my babies, how could you? How could you take them away?”_

And then Perry the Platypus is there, which is a surprise, because he didn’t think OWCA was monitoring him in his sleep. Perry fixes him with a pitying expression--no, not pitying, _empathetic._ He knows, and he knows how much it hurts, and he wishes it could be different, but these are his orders-- _Protect Phineas,_ and as much as Heinz wants to remember, wants to run to his children and wrap them in his arms and introduce them to Vanessa, and…

As much as Heinz wants his family to be whole, he knows this is how it has to be, so he doesn’t fight as Perry the Platypus injects something cold into his wrist. He just shudders and screams in frustration, cursing Perry, cursing Monobrow, cursing OWCA, all while clinging to Perry--Perry, the silent sentinel keeping them apart, and the only thing left connecting them. The last common thread.

And Perry lets him cling--wraps his arms around Heinz, holding the man as the serum takes effect, knowing full well that it will take the memories, but it can do nothing for his sense of loss. For the heartbroken way Heinz stares into space after seeing Phineas in passing; for the way he shakes when he comes face-to-face with Candace or a lookalike.

Heinz tries to hold that last memory in his mind--the last time he hugged his children before OWCA came to take him away. Their eyes bright, smiling, laughing, none of them with any idea that this is the end. He holds onto it in a vain attempt at overcoming the serum, with the hope that maybe he won’t lose this one if he just focuses long enough…

But, with all the others, it goes. Soon he doesn’t remember why he’s holding Perry the Platypus and weeping in the middle of the night. He demands answers, but of course he gets none. He doesn’t have the strength of will to make Perry leave, and cries himself to sleep.

Perry is gone when Heinz wakes up, and he feels utterly embarrassed, crying all over his nemesis over a bad dream. He brings it up when he sees him again, but Perry gestures to him that he should forget it. They’ll both act like it never happened.

It’s good to have a friend like Perry.

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to write this because my re-found interest in Phineas and Ferb was sparked by me wanting to read "Doof as the Flynns' dad" fanfic and I found literally 1 fic (Better For All The World) where the idea was explored. So of course now I have to write the fics I want to read, so that others of my ilk will not be so lost, lol.  
> I have a follow-up oneshot written from Perry's perspective, and I'm thinking of working on a multi-chapter work at some point.


End file.
